"Mattress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she found a match and lit a bit of candle which stopped the neck of an empty bottle. It burned uncertainly as if reluctant to disclose the scene upon which its light fell. A smoke-stained, sloping ceiling, a blackened floor, a shapeless mattress heaped with rags, a deal box, a rusty stove resting upon two bricks, supporting in its turn an ancient frying-pan, a chipped saucer, and a battered tin can from which, when the scavenger business was good, old Marg served ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... dun cities, surrounded by well manicured lawns, supported by classic figures in white and lighted by dainty top lights. And out along the boulevards, how lovely they are at night, luminous breaks along the dark highways, suggesting so tactfully the kind of tire to use or the sort of mattress to lie upon. ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... bag and with deft speed began to cut away the tangled hair from the torn flesh. "I'll put in a stitch or two and bind her up. Looks like a person of means." He gave a side glance at her hand, white and beringed. "You might get off the mattress while I'm doing this. We can put her on it and carry her down. She's a big woman; must be five feet ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... as to the strength of this arrangement before Tristan was at comparative peace. Dr. Grosnoff effected an examination by slacking off the ropes until Tristan lay a couple of feet clear of the bed, then himself lay on the mattress face ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... refused to return to Batignolles so late, and a mattress was laid on the floor in the shop near the table. She slept there amid the debris of the feast, and a neighbor's cat profited by an open window to establish herself by her side, where she crunched the bones of the goose all night between her fine, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... The pockets of his trousers contained the usual miscellany of keys and small change, while in his hip pocket was found a small pearl-handled revolver of the type women usually keep around. A gold watch with a Masonic charm had slid down between the mattress and the window, while a showy diamond stud was still fastened in the bosom of his shirt. Taken as a whole, the personal belongings were those of a man of some means, but without any particular degree of breeding. The doctor heaped ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and in turn lustily kissed them on both cheeks. It was a funny sight. When we got on board again after a couple of hours on shore the wind rose and we tossed about considerably. Another sleepless night on the "living" mattress in the bunk, and early in the morning we reached the Persian ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... out he probably will hurt himself. It is impossible to release him now, Miss Jennings, but if you insist we can have a mattress ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "That mattress in the little bedroom looks all right," he said. "I'll pack it outside before I go, so it will have all day to-morrow out in the sun. I'll have Hepsy bring her own ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... she admitted when they stood under the peaked roof. "I took it down from the spare room when Mary Ellen bought the brass one to sleep in when she comes. The mattress wouldn't fit any other; so I suppose it might as well go along. There's some patchwork quilts in that chest, too, that Mary Ellen never liked. I guess you could have some ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... about her death. The room they gave her was the cell of a mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun's old straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay. Her kinsmen on the morrow had much ado to get in a coverlet and mattress for her use. For her nurse and keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard's, a lay-sister, daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed her; a girl right worthy of her mother, capable of any wickedness, a source of danger ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... had the sorrow to be blind, Yet a hundred people with good eyes would listen to him all night; For they took great enjoyment in the heaven of his mind, And were glad when the old blind poet let them share his powers of sight. And there was Heine lying on his mattress all day long, He had no wealth, he had no friends, he had no joy at all, Except to pour his sorrow into little cups of song, And the world finds in them the magic wine that his broken ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward heaven. Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles about my mattress-grave in Paris, where early and late I hear nothing but the rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strumming. A grave without repose, death without the privileges of the dead, who have no debts to pay, and need ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... feet broad by seven deep, and nine feet high, with a rounded ceiling. The floor is of shiny blackened bricks. The barred window of opaque glass, with a ventilator, is high up in the middle of the end wall. In the middle of the opposite end wall is the narrow door. In a corner are the mattress and bedding rolled up [two blankets, two sheets, and a coverlet]. Above them is a quarter-circular wooden shelf, on which is a Bible and several little devotional books, piled in a symmetrical pyramid; there are also a black hair brush, tooth-brush, and a bit of soap. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that night on a brush-heap and slept soundly. The green, yielding beech-twigs, covered with a buffalo robe, were equal to a hair mattress. The heat and smoke from a large fire kindled in the afternoon had banished every "no-see-em" from the locality, and in the morning the sun was above the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... At length I saw a light through the cracks in the attic door, and walked in. To my amazement, the first person I saw was a woman of about thirty-five, in pearl-gray Quaker dress—one of your quiet, good-looking people. She was seated on a stool beside a straw mattress upon which lay a black woman. There were three others crowded close around a small stove, which was red-hot—an unusual spectacle in this street. Altogether ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... welcome than otherwise. I had full confidence in my own courage; and if anything should happen, it would make a capital story for my first New-York supper. I saw there was but one bed, and a small straw mattress on the floor beside it for the boy, and therefore declared that I should sleep on the bench, wrapped in my cloak. Neither objected to this, and they presently retired. I determined, however, to keep awake as long as possible. I threw a fresh log on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Archibald lay awake on her straw mattress. Absolute darkness was about her, but through the open window she could see, over the tops of the trees on the other side of the lake, ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... though the winner, had mounted high into the Major's good opinion, insomuch that when he left the Major at his own room before going to bed, the Major as a special attention, sent the Native—who always rested on a mattress spread upon the ground at his master's door—along the gallery, to light him to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... two companions, and never so much by a greater number. One glass of a fragrant wine, the colour of honey, and unmixed with water, crowned the repast. Ser Francesco then went into his own chamber, and found, on his ample mattress, a cool, refreshing sleep, quite sufficient to remove all the fatigues of the morning; and Ser Giovanni lowered the pillow against which he had seated himself, and fell into his usual repose. Their separation was not of ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... properly satisfied at the relative comfort in which her young ones were growing up. Business was getting better and better, and an old stocking which she kept hidden between the foot board of her bunk and the big mattress there, was gradually filling with the silver douros ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... carpenters camp on the floor, which is covered with their mosquito nets. Before the sun rises, at 5.45 or 5.50, Paul brings me tea, bread, and a couple of eggs; and by about six I am at work. I work in bed—my bed is of mats, no mattress, sheets, or filth—mats, a pillow, and a blanket—and put in some three hours. It was 9.5 this morning when I set off to the stream-side to my weeding; where I toiled, manuring the ground with the best enricher, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have fatal consequences. Helen, on this, observed that the king was more important than the crown, and that the best way would be to keep them together; so she wrapped up the crown in a cloth, and hid it under the mattress of his cradle, with a long spoon for mixing his pap upon the top, so, said the queen, he might take care of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... detail of its equipment is a stumpy and amazingly abrupt bedstead against the wall, which is just big enough for a big doll. The bedclothes of this eerie little cot are thrown back, and in the centre of the rumpled mattress, in the hollow made by my heroine's recumbent form, curled up in a sublime indifference to the puffing and blowing of its mistress on the hearth, lies a shabby, emaciated, and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... his trunk and mattress. Speaking of the prisons in which the privates were confined he says: "I once and once only ventured to penetrate into these abodes of human misery and despair. But to what purpose repeat my visit, when I had neither relief to administer ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... Ezra's voice Oliver sprang from the coarse straw mattress—it had been as eider-down to his stage-jolted body—pushed open the wooden blind and peered out. The sun was peeping over the edge of the Notch and looking with wide eyes into the saucer-shaped valley in which the cabin stood. The fogs which at twilight had stolen down to the meadows ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and shouting "Sanctuary!" till he reached a cell built over the aisles in Notre Dame. Here he deposited Esmeralda carefully, untied the ropes which bruised her arms, and spread a mattress on the floor; then he left her, and returned ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... his bunk mattress wasn't as soft as Ma's eiderdown comforts. He liked everything—until the sergeant had cussed at him ...
— Sonny • Rick Raphael
... the proper height in the logs at one corner of the room, and into these ends of poles were fitted the opposite ends, where they crossed, being supported by a crotch or a block of the proper height. Across these poles others were laid, and these were covered by a thick mattress of hemlock boughs, over which blankets were spread. On such beds as these the first inhabitants of this town slept and their first children were born. For want of chairs, rude seats were made with axe and auger by boring holes and inserting ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear—evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a strange sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm—and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... rush about Engleton. He was lying on his back, stretched on a rough mattress at the farther end of the room, moaning slightly. The two men ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... however, lay down on her mattress by Iris' side, she thought a great deal before she went to sleep. She thought, as she expressed it to herself, all round the subject, to the right of it, and to the left of it. She thought of it in its breadth, and she thought of ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... with much difficulty; and my fever increased to such a degree that I became delirious. All my domestics were attacked soon after with the same fever, the priest Stephen only excepted, who had to take care of us all. My only bed was a wretched mattress, which had been lent me by a person named John Volcan; and my life was despaired of by every one, till the 9th of September, when, by the cares of Stephen and of Martha, my good hostess, or rather through the mercy of God, the fever abated, and I soon recovered my ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... There was something in her eyes, as I have said, that would have tamed a tiger. I got up. I did everything she had asked. The furnishings were all moved out of her room until it looked as bare as a place to rent in December. There was nothing on the floor but a mattress and a chair, which were left by her directions. I sent the servants away with instructions to come back after three weeks' time. At last, when all was done and I was alone, walking through the house like a sour-faced ghost, I climbed the stairs to her door. It was locked! I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... George," she said, "to have to make you go to bed, but it's the only thing we can do. You'll find your bed feels a lot better since I took the horse collar and the pair of rubber boots out from under the mattress. That's a poor place to keep things. ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... Court House which was the scene of the oratorical triumph of Patrick Henry; he flirted with the pretty girls in the village, and even had two half-serious love affairs in rapid succession; he slept upon a hard mattress at night and imbibed more than the usual allotment of Greek, Latin, and mathematics in the daytime. One year he captured the Greek prize and the next the Sutherlin medal for oratory. With a fellow classicist he entered into a solemn compact to hold all their conversation, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... of rubber sheeting, single width, is most useful. For the confinement the bed should be made by first spreading over the mattress the wide rubber sheet, over this put an old blanket, then the under sheet; upon the right side of the bed, where most likely the woman will lie, place the square of rubber, over that the old comfortable, four double, ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... of the climate soon brought on fevers, and both the kings were attacked. Richard, when unable to mount his horse, was carried on a mattress to the front of the army, to superintend the machines and military engines, often himself aiming a ballista at the walls. He thus slew a Saracen whom he beheld parading on the ramparts in the armor of a Christian knight who had lately ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... she demanded in agonized reproach. "I thought the maids attended to the beds here. I left the mattress turned over the foot all day long, and the door was wide open. Everybody in the neighborhood must have looked in and then decided that I was lazy and shiftless. They believe that I have been brought up to let things go undone like that. They do, they do! Miss Merriam just the same ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... did that to get more of a mattress?" he said. "But suppose you wanted to keep warm in really cold weather, in a snowstorm, say. Which side of the robe ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... hear of no excuses. I must stay until morning. I could sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she could lay a mattress for herself on the floor by the side of Giovanni's. There would be no great sacrifice in that. It was going to be one of Giovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the poor man tell who was to occupy the berth! You might have been a fat old lady for anything he knew!" replied Mrs. Beverley, settling herself on the mattress below. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... work when I left home," Darrin informed him. "If I hadn't felt that I could endure a little fatigue, then I'd have remained at home and looked for a job sleeping in a mattress factory's show-room." ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... intense heat as well as I could by taking the mattress from the bed and erecting it as a bulwark before the window, with only enough space reserved on the top so as to look out, I anxiously observed the animals in the opposite room. Immediately opposite the window ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... had been closed and the air heavy and musty, but here the soft night breeze was drifting in. On a table, in odd conjunction, stood the remains of a meal, a roll of bandages, and a half-burned candle; and finally, against the wall lay a bed of a sort, a mattress piled ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Bemis, though perfectly conscious, made no comment whatever. But Buck, glancing toward him as he lay on the husk mattress behind the driver, surprised a fleeting but unmistakable expression of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... got him between the robes of my floor mattress. Drawing a box to the bedside I again took his hands between mine and prepared for ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... a mattress at a sale, and she thought she would undo it and shake up the stuff inside and make it softer, and when she cut it up she found among the stuffing some bits of paper that looked like bank-notes; but they ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... rent in advance. The month for which she had paid expired in three days, and she was apprehensive of being turned out, unless she could collect sufficient money to pay him. She knew not where to find the means. The room was stripped bare of furniture to supply the calls of nature; nothing but a mattress in one corner of the apartment, and a few cooking utensils remained. She labored day and night, to procure work, but all her efforts were unavailing. It appeared to her as if the Almighty had forsaken herself and children, and had left ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... humanity thrown hither by the tide of anarchy and of bloodshed. But at the top of the house we found an attic. It was empty save for a couple of chairs, a table and a broken-down bedstead on which were a ragged mattress and pillow. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... he is, that painter of yours!" they said to her. And the procession entered the house, leaving Gritte open-mouthed with amazement at the sight of Max in his bloody shirt, stretched half-fainting on a mattress. ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... said: she spoke very low, and the boy had to bend over her to hear, "if you poke about in the middle of the mattress you'll find a couple of pounds. I saved them up a long while ago. That will pay for burying me. And, Jim, you'll take care of the kid. You won't let it ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... the home of a young couple. They received the travellers as the patriarchs must have received the guest sent by God. They had to sleep on a corn husk mattress in an old moldy house. The woodwork, all eaten by worms, overrun with long boring-worms, seemed to emit sounds, to be alive ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... chatter with all the volubility his breath would permit during the whole time I sat eating, not one word of English did he speak, and not one word therefore did I understand. Seeing how it must be with him presently, I brought his mattress and rugs from his cabin, and had scarce laid them down when he let fall one of his sticks and drooped over. I grasped him, and partly lifting, partly hauling, got him on his back and covered him up. In a few minutes ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation,—full of impatience. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... sea-sickness had brought little Fleda to look like the ghost of herself. So soon as the weather changed and sky and sea were looking gentle again, Mr. Carleton had a mattress and cushions laid in a sheltered corner of the deck for her, and carried her up. She had hardly any more ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... came, instead of lying down upon straw, or a husk mattress, the Twins had their own mother to tuck them in their own white beds in their own dear, clean rooms, and then to sing them to sleep as she had done when ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and many of its windows caved in by blows of gun butts and, at the nearer end of the principal street, five houses in smoking ruins. A group of men and women were pawing about in the wreckage, seeking salvage. They had saved a half-charred washstand, a scorched mattress, a clock and a few articles of women's wear; and these they had piled in a mound on the edge of ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... will be the right side of the patient as she lies in bed. One objection to a double bed is its tendency to sag. This tendency can be obviated however by placing an ironing board under the spring from side to side, or by using shelves from a book case. This expedient will support the mattress, thereby rendering the bed firm and free from any sagging tendency. The position of the bed in the room should be such that the patient will not directly face the window light, nor be in a direct draught between the window and the door. ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... stupefied condition I was hesitating which of the alternatives to choose—the chair or the table, for, oddly enough, I never thought of the bed, when my host settled the question by leading me forcibly forward and flinging me down on the mattress. He then took a wooden wedge out of his pocket, and, going to the door, thrust it in the crack, giving the handle a violent tug to see whether the door stood the test. 'There now, mate,' he said with a grin—a grin that seemed to suggest something my tipsy brain could not grasp, 'I have just shut ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... him generously, what time he was out of work; so, when he seeth thee, he will rejoice in thee and entreat thee generously, even as thou entreatedst him." According he made for the door of the dyery and saw Abu Kir seated on a high mattress spread upon a bench beside the doorway, clad in royal apparel and attended by four blackamoor slaves and four white Mamelukes all robed in the richest of raiment. Moreover, he saw the workmen, ten negro slaves, standing at work; for, when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... let's find the softest side of this board! Strikes me the Company's mighty considerate. All kinds of ventilation. Good chance to study astronomy. Wonder if I couldn't borrow a mattress somewhere? Ha! Good eye! Watch ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... queer and crowded, for Mr. Downs had brought down a mattress from upstairs, and made a bed on the floor, upon which Eyebright's "man" was now sleeping. His wet clothes had been changed for some dry ones belonging to Mr. Bright, and, altogether, he looked far less wild and forlorn than he had appeared to be ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... shoemaking, brickmasonry and brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical and architectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning, sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, housekeeping, mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture, dairying ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... staring out, lost in a troubled sea of racing thought. Presently he returned to the sitting room. He was about to pass out on to the veranda, but abruptly paused. With a gesture of impatient defiance he returned to his bedroom and drew a black bottle of rye whisky from beneath the mattress of his bed. Without waiting to procure a glass he withdrew the cork, and, thrusting the neck of the bottle into his mouth, took a long "pull" at the contents. After a moment he removed it, and gasped with the scorch of the powerful liquor. Then ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great soft mattress. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... his eyes grew heavier and drowsier, and they forthwith waited upon him until he went to sleep; when Hsi Jen unclasped the jade of spiritual perception, and rolling it up in a handkerchief, she lay it under the mattress, with the idea that when he put it on the next day it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... The natural mattress was wide enough to accommodate three. The boughs were laid down in rows with the under side up, and overlapped each other. To be sure, an occasional twig might poke a sleeper's ribs, but what mattered that? To the English boys especially—having the charm of entire novelty—it was a matchless bed, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Corpus Christi a train of Government wagons, loaded with subsistence stores and quartermaster's supplies, started for Laredo, a small town on the Rio Grande below Fort Duncan. There being no other means of reaching my station I put my small personal possessions, consisting of a trunk, mattress, two blankets, and a pillow into one of the heavily loaded wagons and proceeded to join it, sitting on the boxes or bags of coffee and sugar, as I might choose. The movement of the train was very slow, as the soil was soft on the newly made ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... hospitals somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and sometimes very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blanket is spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No cots; seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around from one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I cannot leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, and I do what I can for ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... ascended to the rude accommodation which had been provided. It was one large room, barely furnished. Upon one side straw was thickly littered down—for in those days beds among the common people were unknown. In a sort of alcove at the end was a couch with a rough mattress and coverlet. This Cuthbert took possession of, while his followers stretched ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... movable and fixed, none of which is superfluous, can be briefly described. A bedstead, consisting of the side walls of the apartment; polished steel staples are fixed in these walls, two on each side the apartment at an elevation of about two feet and a half. The occupant's mattress (made of cocoa bark) has two stout steel hooks at each end; these are hooked into the staples, and so he lies across his abode. A deal table the size of a pocket-handkerchief; also a deal tripod. A waterspout so ingeniously contrived ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... hung himself there for love. This was a horrid story, but it was not the whole drama. Three years after, two very old men, who were very rich, and said to be retired merchants, were found stifled beneath their mattress, and the criminal was never found out. The people of the quartier, however, knew all about it, and said who was the murderer. They maintained it was the old suicide, the shadow of whom was ill at ease, and had a mortal aversion to any one who disagreed with him about a suitable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... estimation, and, invariably, whether it be in summer or winter, place it on the bed of a stranger; but I would recommend those who travel in that part of Europe, as we did, during the three summer months, to decline this domestic attention. The eider appears very much like a feather mattress, but is so light, that, when used as a coverlet, you can scarcely feel the difference between its weight and that of an ordinary ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... mend that," said I, and at once fetched a mattress from the cabin next mine; this I placed beside him, and dragged him on to it, he very weakly assisting. I then brought clothes and rugs to cover him with, and made him a high pillow, and as he lay close to the furnace he could not ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... are returning home, far from Paris, without doubt. Dear little Goualeuse, always good, I recognize you there. Do you remember the poor woman to whom you gave your mattress, linen, and the small amount of money you had, which we were about to spend in the country? for then you were crazy after the country, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... room stood an iron camp-bed without curtains. There, on a worn mattress, lay King Friedrich, the terror of Europe, without coverlet, in an old blue roquelaure. He had a big cocked-hat, with a white feather [hat aged, worn soft as duffel, equal to most caps; "feather" is not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gratefully, "that you are a dashed good sort. You seem to me to have the making of an absolute topper! It's under the mattress. I had it on me when I fell downstairs and I had to shove ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... it is much simpler to take an air-mattress and a foot-pump. True, even this has its disadvantages. It is not safe to stick pins into it while disrobing at night. Occasionally, a faulty valve lets go, and the sleeper dreams he is falling from the Woolworth ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... like a top on his light mattress, enveloped in his mosquito curtains. In the morning he accompanied Mr. Merriman to his daftarkhanah {office}, where he found a large staff under the superintendence of the muhri {chief clerk}, Surendra Nath's father. He returned to the house for tiffin, spent the afternoon indoors over his ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... basin that stood between the windows. She took off her shoes and stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the high, white bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange, quaint bed, with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the sheets and mattress! She stretched her strong limbs that ached a little. She ran her fingers through her loosened hair for a while. She looked at her round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw for the first time, the fine, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Even in broad daylight, I could see that he glanced round him with apprehension. He was shaking quite visibly. The room was decidedly old-fashioned, but the greater part of the furniture was modern. The bed was an Albert one with a spring mattress, and light, cheerful dimity hangings. The windows were French—they were wide open, and let in the soft, pleasant air, for the day was truly a spring one in winter. The paper on the walls ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... suffered from fever something like typhus. They left me for dead, as after a battle, in the most wretched and frightful of native villages. No doctors, who might, perhaps, have cured me, not a bed, not even a mattress. My servants, believing me past hope, abandoned me—or rather, for I prefer your Parisian word—cast me adrift—there is no other expression. There I was, stretched out on a heap of damp straw—in ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... they talked matters over. Toby was not left alone in the endeavor to invent some scheme whereby Link might be caught. Steve hatched up one that they determined to try that same night. It was to dig a pit, cover it skillfully with a delicate mattress that, when sprinkled with earth would seem to be perfectly sound; but which was calculated to give way, once a weight of thirty pounds or more had embarked ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... years he has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft mattress, and furnished with many other things which contribute to life's comfort. When the bed, mattress, and other articles were being brought into this apartment, the tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the eyes of the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... went away from Hilton. Edith's tirades became unendurable. I didn't want even to eat her food. The spinet desk, the bureau, the chiffonier, the closet, I cleared of every trace of me. I stripped the bed of its linen and left the mattress rolled over the foot-board in eloquent abandonment. The waste-basket bulged with discarded odds and ends. One had only to look into that room to feel convinced that its occupant had disappeared, like a spirit from a dead body, never ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... and lead him to discuss serious problems.' Whether he denounced vice and luxury, or extolled poverty, Attalus found a convinced disciple in Seneca. His convictions did not possess sufficient weight to lead him to embrace a life of austere poverty, but he at least learned to sleep on a hard mattress, and to eschew hot baths, wine, unguents, oysters, and mushrooms. How far his life conformed to the highest principles of his creed, it is hard to say. If we are to believe his detractors, he was guilty of committing adultery with the Princess ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... tightened her apron-strings about her stout waist. "Well, 'Miss Johnson,' you git holt of that mat-trass and help me meek up dis heah bed so it 'll be fit for you' mistis to sleep on it." With a jerk she turned up the mattress. The maid was so taken aback for a moment that she did not speak. Then ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... enlivening company of an alarum clock, Jake retired to his couch, which consisted of a flax-stuffed mattress resting on a wooden bedstead, and there he quickly buried himself in a weird tangle of dirty blankets, and went ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... in cellars, but the soldiers shot down through the gratings. Some citizens were shot on opening the doors, others in endeavoring to escape. Among other persons whose houses were burned was an old man of 90 lying dangerously ill, who was taken out on his mattress and left lying in his garden all night. He died shortly after in the hospital to which a friend ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... room, capable of constant ventilation, either by the windows, doors, or flues, or by all. Next, a comfortable bed, of almost any material, except cotton and feathers, though the latter might be indulged in during the severest season; but it is better to dispense with them in toto, and use instead a mattress of hair, husk, moss, or straw. These even should be frequently aired, but only upon bright sunny days, and occasionally changed altogether for new material. In place of heavy cotton counterpanes use woollen blankets ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... carrying an hip ring, a rubber ring inflated by the breath that is the best substitute for a mattress. The ring had been left behind at Rampart, and so dependent does one grow on the little luxuries and ameliorations one permits oneself that these two nights in camp were almost sleepless for lack ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... with a broken back has been moved to a hospital near his home so his family can see him. We sent him on a mattress, fixed up with pillows and cushions so that he did not suffer at ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... had luxury, too. I had a room with bath. The bath was at the stream some fifty yards away, but such discrepancies are minor affairs in the midst of such big elemental things as were all about me. My mattress was of young cherry shoots, and never did king have a more royal bed, or ever such refreshing sleep. And, while I slept, I grew inside, for the soft music of the pines lulled me to rest, and the subdued ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Romancero,[164]—a collection of poems written in the first years of his illness, with his whole power and charm still in them, and not, like his latest poems of all, painfully touched by the air of his Matrazzen-gruft, his "mattress-grave,"—to see Heine's width of range; the most varied figures succeed one another,—Rhampsinitus,[165] Edith with the Swan Neck,[166] Charles the First, Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine of Mabille, Melisanda of Tripoli,[167] Richard Coeur de Lion, Pedro the Cruel[168], Firdusi[169], ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... a piece of bread my eyes chanced to rest upon my hand. The knuckles were skinned and inflamed clear across, the fingers swollen, the nails rimmed with black. I felt the mattress-like growth of beard on my neck, knew that the sleeve of my coat was ripped, that a button was missing from the throat of the blue shirt I wore. The dirk mentioned by Wolf Larsen rested in its sheath on my hip. It was very natural that it should be there,—how ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... mattress and brought out two different articles of headgear that had been taken four days before. "Do you recognize ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... the evening, and came to pay him a visit, accompanied by the Countess of Argyll and the Countess of Huntly. While she was there, Durham, in preparing his bed, set fire to his palliasse, which was burned as well as a part of the mattress; so that, having thrown them out of the window all in flames, for fear lest the fire should reach the rest of the furniture, he found himself without a bed, and asked permission to return to the town to sleep; ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on a mattress there, behind that group,"—nodding in the implied direction; "and it would be well, if you could lie beside her and get ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... and rope under his mattress and flung himself upon it, all dressed as he was, face to the wall, with one careless arm under his head, just as if he had dropped ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... over it; and she had dropped asleep almost as soon as she lay down. But, although his own bed of sage-brush was tolerably comfortable, even to one accustomed all his life to the finest springs and hair mattress that money could buy, and although the girl had insisted that he must rest too, for he was weary and there was no need to watch, sleep would not come ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... knapsack again all the knick-knacks that I had taken out, and we are off again, willy-nilly, for the city hospital. There was no more room there. In vain the sisters contrive to squeeze the iron beds together, the wards are full. Worn out by all these delays, I seize one mattress, Francis takes another, and we go and stretch ourselves in the garden ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... more in fashion, the right hand fights while the left rules the reins. The truth is, the soldier and the gentleman are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the government of the island. A committee-man properly should be the governor's mattress to fit his truckle, and to new string him with sinews of war; for his chief use is to raise assessments in ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a small room, almost bare, the bedstead of blistered iron, the mattress thin, the bedding tattered and worn. A soapbox was the chair on which Nellie had been sitting; there was no other. Against the wall, above a rough shelf, was a piece of mirror-glass without a frame. The window in the sloping roof was uncurtained. On the poor bed, ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... mattress covers / of Arras saw ye there Lustrous all and silken, / and spreading sheets there were Wrought of silk of Araby, / the best might e'er be seen. O'er them lay rich embroidered / stuffs that cast a ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... Lynde calls a 'holy terror.' There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... without a dowry, and as my husband had only a large library of books and a great deal of learning, the bed and pillows were thought the most profitable investment. After this I thought that I had discovered the philosopher's stone. So when a new carpet or mattress was going to be needed, or when, at the close of the year, it began to be evident that my family accounts, like poor Dora's, "wouldn't add up," then I used to say to my faithful friend and factotum Anna, who shared all my joys and sorrows, "Now, if you will keep the babies ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... would have been to those who were condemned to imprisonment and hard labour for their offences; and he volunteered to procure them for me the next morning. I then wished him a good-night, and threw myself on my mattress. Worn out with fatigue and distress of mind, I slept soundly, without dreaming, until daylight the next morning. As I awoke, and my scattered senses were returning, I had a confused idea that there was something which weighed heavily on ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... and my bed-place overboard, for I was in no danger of being washed out of my bed, as it required no little management to emerge from it at pleasure. This berth of mine was commonly called a doghouse (a box about six feet long, four high, and two broad,) containing a mattress fitted about 18 inches from the deck, above which there was a sliding door and curtain, scarcely large enough to admit an ordinary sized man. I found it, however, much more pleasant in fine weather ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... will not wait, reads every report himself, and passes days and nights at it;"[3238] Jean Bon, in wooden shoes and woolen vest, with a bit of coarse bread and a glass of bad beer,[3239] writes and dictates until his strength fails him, and he has to lie down and sleep on a mattress on the floor.—Naturally, again, when interfered with, and the tools in their hands are broken, they are dissatisfied; they know well the worth of a good instrument, and for the service, as they comprehend it, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to talk of turning in and quite another to do it, however. The three girls were going to sleep on the floor of the wagon, but when the mattress was unrolled there seemed no room at all, and so much twisting and turning was necessary, before there was room for the three of them to lie down, that a good part of the night was taken up in getting comfortable; indeed they might not ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... to talk to me. Presently the latter asked me kindly enough if I thought I should be sufficiently strong to trek back to the station that afternoon in an ox-cart with springs to it and lying at full length upon a hide-strung "cartel" or mattress. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... from the bed. The pillows were stuffed with valuable furs; fine linen and embroideries filled the bolsters. The feather-sack contained dresses of rich and costly fabrics,—the styles showing them to be at least twenty years old. And in the mattress were stowed away the dinner and tea services of silver, together with porcelain, crystal, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... However, I noticed in one of the Parsees' shops a number of light bamboo bedsteads; which are the coolest and best in a climate like this. If you lay a couple of blankets on the bamboos, you will find that you don't want a mattress." ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... bed. It will then serve the purpose of a sofa as well as a bed. If it is a box couch, further economy will be gained by its use as a place to store the bedclothes. But the simplest of all arrangements is a divan bed, formed of springs and mattress alone, and supported on legs nailed to the corners of the spring-frame. Over it a cover should be thrown during the day, and the pillows in use, if there is not room for them elsewhere, should be slipped ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... were struck with pity, or perhaps it was the Governor. Anyhow, they brought me a mattress and a rug. They told me to get up off the bed, and I told them I couldn't get up, couldn't even turn over. So they said, 'Very well, then; you can do without these things,' and they took them away. The funny thing ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the Basque there was a sudden change, a change there was no mistaking. He was unable to proceed, and I laid his mattress under a great live oak whose branches overshadowed space enough for our camp. I cannot tell you, Elizabeth, what a singular stillness and awe settled over all of us. I have often thought and wondered about it since. There was no quarreling, no singing, nor laughing among the men, who were ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... would compel me in the future to sleep either on the ground—which was practically impossible in that region owing to the number of ants and other insects—or else do as I did, sleep on four wooden packing-boxes, which I placed in a line. They made a most uneven and hard bed, as I had, of course, no mattress and no covering of any kind. A despatch-box, with some money, a lot of important official letters and other documents, were lost, and also my mercurial artificial horizon and one of my chronometers. A number of other things of less ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... herself madly on the bed. She moved, pressing herself against the mattress as if she would rub away, free herself from her loathed self. The sight of her hand was horrible to her, and ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... old Russian Red Cross Hospital, such as it was, dirt and all. The remainder were temporarily put into old barracks. What "flu"-weakened soldier will ever forget those double decked pine board beds, sans mattress, sans linen, sans pillows? If lucky, a man had two blankets. He could not take off his clothes. Death stalked gauntly through and many a man died with his boots on in bed. The glory of dying in France to ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... month's foraging by day and hard work by night, with that nerve-tearing walk as a beginning to her nightly labours. The hole being ready, Jamie Winter conveyed to it a large deep wooden box which he had made at home, with air-holes in the lid, and furnished with mattress and bedding, and this was fitted into the place made for it. It was then Grisell's duty to examine it daily, and to keep the air-holes clean picked, and when it had for some weeks stood trial of no water coming into it from its being sunk so low in ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Then his mattress began to ascend with him, he flew... flew. God I was he falling or being lifted into the air? he felt as light as a feather, as smoke. He opened his eyes for a moment and saw stars glittering in a dark sky over ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... his cabin and slept in his bunk. Long ago, in the world that was slowly coming back to her, the idea of sleeping in the bunk of a Chinaman she had seen killed would have revolted her, now, it did not trouble her at all. She only knew that a mattress and clean sheets were heaven, even if she had to sleep with a revolver under her pillow. Then in a day or two she only put the revolver there as a matter of routine. The "Chinks" gave evidence that so far from making trouble they were extremely anxious to propitiate and please, and the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Ness' bed in the barn, thereby nearly scaring the hired man into a fit. Ness ran out of the room in his night dress and raised such a yell that he aroused everybody in the house. He got his shotgun and blazed away at the supposed snake, thereby ruining a blanket, two sheets, and filling the mattress with shot. When he found out how he had been hoaxed he was the most foolish looking man to ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... she saw Henrietta spring to her feet, and hastening to the window beheld the melancholy procession; Fred carried on a mattress by Uncle Geoffrey and three of the labourers; Philip Carey walking at one side, and on the other Mrs. Frederick Langford leaning ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... between leaving Clancy and getting back to the dock again, I spent in cleaning up and overhauling my home outfit. My mother couldn't be made to believe that store bedding was of much use—and she was right, I guess—and so a warranted mattress and blankets and comforters and a pillow were made into a bundle and thrown onto a waiting wagon. Then it was good-by to all—good-by to my cousin Nell, who had come over from her house, good-by and a kiss for her little sister—late ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... the 15th of August; they swim in all sorts of abundance and intoxication. And the man of the people, the poor day-labourer who is out of work, the pauper in rags, with bare feet, to whom summer brings no bread, and winter no wood, whose old mother lies in agony upon a rotten mattress, whose daughter walks the streets for a livelihood, whose little children are shivering with hunger, fever and cold, in the hovels of Faubourg Saint-Marceau, in the cock-lofts of Rouen, and in the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... grew, it seemed as if she was being shown the secret store-house of Nature, where she kept all the most lovely plants, out of sight of the world. A soft carpet seemed to spring under Dot's feet, like a nice springy mattress, as she trotted along. She asked the Kangaroo why the earth was so soft, and was told that it was not earth, but the dead leaves of the tree-ferns above them, that had been falling for such a long, long time, that no kangaroo could ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... the English officers. In two small leather packages were comprised the couch of the once mighty ruler of the Continent. The steel bedstead which, when folded up, was only two feet long, and eighteen inches wide, occupied one case, while the other contained the mattress and curtains. The whole was so contrived as to be ready for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... be 'human nature.' He does not do it from any religious motive—from any hope of reward, or any fear of punishment; he does it because he is a man. But when a mother, living among the fair fields of merry England, gives her two-year-old child to be suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, while the said mother waits and talks outside; that I believe to be not human nature. You have the two extremes there, shortly. And you, men, and mothers, who are here face to face with me to-night, I call upon you to say which ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... hard in his youth and had been too shrewd and far-sighted to spend hard. His wife had helped him, and a lucky windfall upon the decease of a parsimonious relative had done the rest. The weekly deposit in the old stocking hidden under the mattress had become a bank deposit, and by the time he was incapacitated from active labor, a decent little income was ready. When the Illsbery Bank stopped payment, not only his daily bread but his dearly valued importance was swept away from him at one fell blow. Instead of being a man of property, ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... moment I sought to move the leg he shrieked out. I sent one of our swiftest runners for the doctor, and in the meantime did the best I could for him. He took it as a matter of course, and did not even thank me. When the doctor came, we got a mattress from a neighbouring house, laid it on the wagon, lifted Scroggie on the top, and dragged him up the hill and home to ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... hours! I heard every one of them strike, as I lay tossing on the patent spring mattress, in that darkly shaded and sacredly secluded room, where I was wont to sleep the sleep of the sluggard, until I saw the day break, for the first time in my life, I think, and the novelty put me to sleep, and thence into a dismal dream, from which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
